With help from Megan Wilson and Daniel Lippman PROGRAMMING NOTE: We’ll be off next week for the holidays but back to our normal schedule on Tuesday, Jan. 2. WHO’S LOBBYING FOR U.S. STEEL: The announcement that Japanese industrial titan Nippon Steel’s plans to purchase the iconic American company U.S. Steel stoked a bipartisan uproar in Washington over the potential national security and supply chain implications of the deal. And the outcry is sure to intensify after President Joe Biden added his voice to the chorus of skeptics on Thursday. — While Biden welcomes investment in the U.S. by foreign manufacturers, White House National Economic Adviser Lael Brainard said in a statement yesterday, the president also believes the deal “appears to deserve serious scrutiny,” regardless of the involvement of a close ally like Japan. — As the two steel giants set out to sell their deal to join forces, the merger’s fate will rest in part on a lobbying operation that’s dwarfed by that of industry peers, according to a PI analysis of disclosures. — U.S. Steel has spent $750,000 on federal lobbying so far this year, and its annual lobbying expenditures haven’t cracked $1 million since 2015. That’s far lower than the $2.1 million in lobbying outlays this year by Nucor Corp., the largest U.S. steel producer, and the $820,000 spent by another industry rival Cleveland-Cliffs. — U.S. Steel retains two outside lobbying firms, including a team at Crossroads Strategies that includes former Sen. John Breaux, Mat Lapinski, Stephanie Leger, Chris Miller, Salim Alameddin and Jason Gleason. Warren Payne of Mayer Brown, a former policy director on the House Ways & Means Committee, has lobbied for the company since 2018, and U.S. Steel has two registered in-house lobbyists, disclosures show: former GOP House staffer Todd Young (no relation to the Indiana senator) and Jenn Lindsey. Nippon Steel retains no federal lobbyists in the U.S., according to both LDA and FARA records. — United Steelworkers, which represents U.S. Steel workers and opposes the sale, has historically had a larger lobbying presence. The union dropped $1.3 million last year between its in-house lobbyists and the outside firm Wessel Group, but its lobbying spending has plummeted this year to just $380,000 through the first three quarters. TGIF, and welcome to the last PI of 2023. Send your best theories as to how that happened so quickly and share some juicy influence gossip for us to chase down in the new year — and as always, thanks for reading. coprysko@politico.com. And be sure to follow me on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter: @caitlinoprysko. TIKTOK HIRES COZEN: TikTok has added another new outside firm to its small army of lobbyists, even as momentum for banning the video app appears to be waning. The platform tapped GOP lobbyist Towner French of Cozen O’Connor Public Strategies last month to lobby on regulation of content platforms and internet technology, according to a newly filed disclosure. — Cozen O’Connor is the seventh outside firm on retainer for TikTok and its parent company ByteDance, which — as your host reported previously — have quickly become one of Washington’s top lobbying spenders. So far in 2023, the companies have spent a combined $7.4 million on federal lobbying efforts to fend off a nationwide ban of the app or a demand from U.S. regulators for ByteDance to spin off the popular app, with a bench of hired guns that includes five former members of Congress, former aides to Biden and new House Speaker Mike Johnson, and multiple other former federal or congressional staffers. COMING TO A TV NEAR YOU: We can’t close out the year without a few more nuggets of news on the continued fight over credit card swipe fees. The lobbying brawl will spill into Kansans’ holiday football viewing thanks to a new ad buy from the Electronic Payments Coalition, which represents banks, credit unions and Visa and Mastercard. — The ad will air during the Kansas City Chiefs’ Christmas Day faceoff against the Las Vegas Raiders as well as Kansas State’s Pop-Tarts Bowl game against N.C. State on Dec. 28, EPC spokesperson Nick Simpson told PI. — The spot accuses Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), one of the main sponsors of the bill targeting Visa and Mastercard’s dominance of the credit card market, of “partnering with corporate megastores” to jeopardize credit cards’ security. It also cites Marshall’s recent request to the Biden administration, with co-sponsor Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), for a probe of airlines’ reward programs. (DOT confirmed today that it is indeed investigating complaints about frequent flyer programs, which airlines and the EPC say Durbin and Marshall’s bill would gut.) POINTING FINGERS: This month’s disastrous showing by the heads of three elite universities at a congressional hearing about antisemitism on college campuses has led many to wonder “who got paid to give advice on one of the most disastrous public relations moments in modern memory,” our Hailey Fuchs and Michael Stratford report. — “The answer, in part, is that the university leaders were being advised by some of the most prominent legal and communications experts in the field of ‘crisis communications.’ Now, the crisis communicators are in a PR crisis of their own: Rather than communicating, they are hunkering down in the storm. They’ve declined to comment publicly, even as critics say they share culpability for an episode that devastated the reputations of their clients.” — “The Harvard and Penn presidents turned to attorneys at the prominent law firm WilmerHale — including Jamie Gorelick, the former deputy attorney general turned Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner lawyer — to prepare them for the hearing held by the House Education and the Workforce Committee. WilmerHale also had ‘some communication’ with MIT in the lead-up to the hearing, according to a person familiar with the preparations.” — “Harvard was represented by crisis communications doyenne Risa Heller, and Penn was represented by PR adviser Susan Lagana of top D.C. firm Invariant. The head of Harvard’s more powerful governing body, former Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, recruited the PR giant Edelman, which is run by a longtime friend of the Democratic megadonor, to help with the college’s general response to the war but not preparation for the hearing.” — “It is not yet publicly known how much the universities spent on crisis communications during the episode.” And the fallout is still ongoing, with people involved attempting to distance themselves and some rival firms looking to poach clients and boost their own business. GRAIL LOBBIES UP: Cancer diagnostics company Grail added to its lobbying roster in Washington, hiring high-powered lobbying firms BGR Group and Williams and Jensen to work on issues including Medicare coverage for multi-cancer detection tests, Megan reports. — At BGR Group, Grail has former top health aide to ousted Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) Ryan Long in its corner. He is giving both “strategic counsel” to the company and advocating on issues related to oncology and multi-cancer diagnostics and screening, according to disclosures. — Alec Aramanda, who most recently served as the Medicare staffer for Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, is among the lobbyists who will work on the account for Williams and Jensen, the former K Street home of one of Johnson’s top aides. Disclosure forms say that the firm will work on a pair of bills that would allow Medicare to cover the tests Grail produces. — Biotech giant Illumina, which purchased Grail in 2021, announced earlier this week it would be divesting from the company following years of fighting with antitrust regulators over the deal. According to the recently released lobbying disclosures, the two firms’ work for Grail began on Dec. 1. COMING ATTRACTIONS: Lobbyists for business and consumer groups are planning a slew of calls and meetings with lawmakers and staff in the first weeks of 2024 and considering ad buys — hoping to push stricter disclosure requirements on insurers, pharmacy benefit managers, hospitals and other health facilities over the finish line, Megan reports. — “We’re going to take a break so members and staff can enjoy time with their families, but they’ll start to hear from us again before they even get back to Washington,” said Adam Buckalew, a lobbyist representing Better Solutions for Healthcare, a coalition that includes AHIP and the American Benefits Council. — Earlier this month, the House passed a sweeping health package that would expand Trump-era regulations requiring hospitals and insurers to post their prices and negotiated rates for services — and the Senate has signaled an interest in moving the proposal. — Lawmakers in both chambers have advanced measures that would force pharmacy benefit managers — the intermediaries between drugmakers and insurers — to be more transparent about their business operations. The moves are part of a yearlong effort in Congress to address rising health care costs — an issue that could become particularly potent in the 2024 election. PI OPEN MIC: Before we leave you to finish up your last minute holiday shopping, and wrapping, and baking — it’s not just me, right? — Jonny Hiler, a principal at Miller Strategies, penned a very D.C. Christmas poem that PI got permission to share. So without further ado, here is “The Week Before Recess.”
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